El Salvador buys 150 more bitcoins

El Salvador has bought 150 more bitcoins, President Nayib Bukele announced, taking the Central American country’s holdings of the volatile cryptocurrency to 700 coins.

“We just bought dip,” Bukele tweeted late on Sunday, referring to a recent slump in bitcoin prices.

Earlier this month, El Salvador became the first country to adopt the popular cryptocurrency as an official currency along side the US dollar.

We just bought the dip.

150 new coins!

El Salvador now holds 700 coins.#Bitcoin🇸🇻

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 20, 2021

What is bitcoin?

Created following the 2008 global financial crisis, bitcoin initially promoted a libertarian ideal and aspired to overthrow traditional monetary and financial institutions such as central banks.

The founding white paper, published on October 31, 2008, was penned by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym whose identity remains unknown.

The eight-page document included the key goal of processing online payments between two parties without passing via a financial institution.

A first block of 50 bitcoins was created in January 2009, which has risen to 18.8 million units currently in circulation.

No more than 21 million can be created, helping bitcoin’s price to trade way above its rivals.

Thousands of other cryptocurrencies have meanwhile since been created, led by the likes of ethereum, ripple and tether.

How to obtain bitcoin?

There are two ways to get hold of bitcoin. Historically, individuals have “mined” for it by using computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles.

But as cryptocurrency’s price soared, so did the number of miners, reducing the chances of accessing units this way.

Mining also requires huge amounts of energy, meaning the cost of accessing a bitcoin can exceed the gain, notwithstanding the environmental impact amid global efforts to tackle climate change.

The alternative way is to buy a whole or fractions of bitcoin on an exchange platform using traditional currencies.

Purchased funds are held in protected virtual wallets, but with hacks still possible, some investors have decided to hold portfolios offline.